Just finished watching "April is your lie (４月は君の嘘)"

Contains a major spoiler. Do not read this, if you are going to watch the animation.

I was bored so I decided to watch some famous Japanese animation. On a Japanese ranking site, I had found that this animation, “April is your lie” was ranked at top. 

The animation began as a blond young girl (Kawori) in a school uniform was chasing a black cat on a street. After watching the first episode, I did not like the unusual look of characters (quite unique from other Japanese animations), and the first episode was not so interesting, and I expected it would be a kind of predictable “boys and girls become great piano players” story, like in a sports movie ends with the protagonist winning a big game after lots of hard practices. I was tempted to stop watching the series. I watched several more episodes, and it was still boring.

As Kousei developed feelings for Kawori, the story became a little bit interesting. And at somewhere between episode 7~10, Kawori was shown to taking lots of pills. It was easy to expect that she would either die or become unable to play violin. I wondered how it would end, so I kept watching the series through the end.

When I began watching this animation, I wondered what the title "April is your lie" meant. As I  was watching episodes after episodes, I forgot about the title. Then in the final episode, the meaning of the title was revealed. Kawori had been in love with Kousei long before they officially met each other. But she pretended to like Watari, because she knew that she would going to die soon and did not want to hurt Kousei by impressing her onto him.

Before I watched the final episode, I did not have any clue that Kawori liked Kousei. So I could not understand why Kawori and Watari were a couple. They had nothing in common, and they barely met each other right before Kawori met Kousei with Watari together. Kawori and Kousei seemed to have much in common such as the passion for music, so it made no sense to me that Kawori was a couple with Watari, not Kousei. Only at the final episode, this problem was soled. So, that was her Lie on April. 

Kawori left a mail to Kousei right before she took the surgery, to tell him that it was Kousei who she loved. The surgery went bad and she died. To be honest, in a few episodes before the final episode when it was known that Kawori was taking the surgery, I thought ‘Please do not be a childish happy ending like she will be magically completely cured and becomes able to play violin.’ But her death was so sudden in the final episode (it just went to straight to the graveyard scene), even though it was I myself who wanted a sadder ending, I became sad. And I became sadder when I knew Kawori had been  in love with Kousei all along. Kousei discovered Kawori’s feelings after reading her mail, but she did never know that Kousei also loved her. This is sad, because she does not exists any more, and she can never know about that.

People change as the live. What defines the identity of a person? His body changes so it is not that. Then his thoughts are. But his thoughts are also changes as time changes. That is, the feeling of myself is a delusion. For example, the I as a child was a different being and it does not exist anymore even though I am still alive. Kousei’s heart would also change as he grows old. Perhaps he would meet a new girl and his memory of Kawori would become paler and paler and finally someday, even though Kousei remembers that he had feelings for Kawori, he may not be able to feel it as a feeling anymore. Having the knowledge of “I loved her” and feeling “I loved her” is a different thing. When I was a kid, I loved to have large transforming robot toys. I remember I did, but I cannot feel it. I no longer feel the love for those toys.

So the Kousei Kawori knew would probably not exist any more after 10 or 20 years. But in her letter, her feelings are taken as a snapshot, and it would never change. If the letter will be read 20 years later, her feelings will still be there unchanged, and thus her identity will remain. If our thoughts define our identity, 15-year-old Kawori will keep remain in the letter, unlike alive Kousei whose thoughts shall change.

I do not believe in love, and I have already read or watched many death-involving love stories; but still, such a love story moves my heart. Probably because I am like many other humans who cannot be freed from human emotions.

I am going to watch “April is your lie” from the beginning again, just to find out Kawori’s feelings.

=========Appended one day later==========
Watching the parts of the animation where Kawori and Kousei interact gave me new feelings and thoughts, because now I know that Kawori was expecting her death, and in love with Kousei. The elaborate directing of the animation kind of deceived me to think that Kawori was afraid of losing the ability of playing violin not of the fact that there is a high chance she is going to die.

Now I know why Kawori cried as she was returning home with Kousei in the night when she had escaped the hospital to visit an empty school. I thought it was because she was worried about losing the ability to play violin, it was not. It was because the moment was going to be the most wonderful and beautiful , and probably the last, memory she would ever have.

A love that cannot last despite their feelings is always a beautiful thing; a sadly beautiful thing. If Kawori could have lived long, as a normal person, the love would have turned out a trifle thing. I mean, how many loves in middle school last 10 or 20 years? People's mind changes. It would not be an unbelievable thing, if they break up when they became 25 and found better people. But since Kawori dies at the age of 15, the love stays unchanged forever. Like frozen strawberries in a refrigerator, it does not go bad. But it is sad because it was frozen. It is dead like the frozen strawberries. That is a dilemma. If it is alive it will surely change and go bad. If it is frozen, it keeps its shape forever, but it is dead.

I am not sure what Kawori's disease is. But it is said because her death probably surely preventable when the human race finally gets full genetic and medical knowledge of the human body. A few thousands years later, we may be able to simply replace any organs in human body like we replace the battery of a wall clock. Kawori's sorrow is not a unbreakable, unavoidable, necessary destination. This has already happened before in the human history. People have suffered and died because of a disease that we can now fix in a day.

I hate deaths. I do not want people to die. Some people insists death is just a part of life. I do not  agree with them. There is no god who has made rules for the human race. We are not destined to, or must die. We have been dying just because we still have no ability to fight against some simple chemical rules which have no emotions or meanings. Humans will change the destination of their own destination in the future. And there shall be no death, eventually, until the end of the universe.